SAN ANTONIO — Tim Duncan wouldn't come out and just say it. But in that euphoric time inside the AT&T Center after his San Antonio Spurs closed out their fifth championship since 1999 and added to their legacy yet again, you got the sense he was thinking it.

Why in the basketball-loving, good-to-great, selfless Spurs world that he lives in, would he stop now? Unless Duncan shocks us all and retires, this special group isn't going anywhere. Again.

Only Duncan knows why he didn't end his Sunday night news conference by telling the viewing audience that he'd see them all at training camp. He has a player option worth $10.3 million on his contract for next season, and all the basketball and banking logic points to him exercising it and seeing if these Spurs can win back-to-back titles for the first time in their storied tenure.

Especially considering the evolution of his role and all the masterful managing of minutes from coach Gregg Popovich that has helped keep Duncan from heading for the exits.

They have this whole fountain of youth thing down to a science now, with Popovich pulling all the right strings from October to June and taking pressure off of his 38-year-old big man at every step along the way. To wit: The Spurs — whose program should be emulated and revered more than ever around the NBA from hence forth — had nine players average at least 18 minutes per game during the regular season and no player above 30 minutes per game. For Duncan's part, he hasn't played more than 31.3 minutes per game in the past five seasons — a far cry from the days of yesteryear when he averaged a career-high 40.6 minutes per game in the 2001-02 season — and only averaged 32.7 minutes per game during the latest playoff run when minutes typically increase for the stars.

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That's what differentiates Duncan's situation from some of the other instances in which iconic athletes have walked away while on top, the convenient reality that the Spurs' team structure and depth means Duncan doesn't have to do it all anymore. Tennis great Pete Sampras won a record 14th Grand Slam singles title in Aug. 2002 at the age of 31, then never played again. John Elway won back-to-back NFL titles with his Denver Broncos, then rode off into the blue and gold sunset. But this, quite simply, is not that.

Duncan isn't the Spurs' quarterback anymore, having long since handed those reins to point guard Tony Parker. He's not a one-man show like Sampras either, or like LeBron James in those final few games where his Miami Heat teammates looked so eerily similar to the old Cleveland Cavaliers bunch that couldn't complement him enough. He's an infinitely valuable piece of a fascinating Spurs puzzle, a future Hall of Famer who is still playing at an All-Star level (16.3 points, 9.2 rebounds and 1.2 blocks per game in the playoffs) and whose health has been just fine for quite some time.

So to put it in a Spurs kind of way, Kawhi not come back? Especially with this emergence of third-year small forward Kawhi Leonard.

Of all the relevant subplots that surround Duncan's future, Leonard's may be the most impactful because he'll keep making Duncan's basketball life easier from here on out. That's the genius behind the current state of the Spurs, the fact that the oldies-but-goodies are able to hang on just a little bit longer because of the young guys whose development has been so beautifully timed.

Duncan, as he made abundantly clear after the Game 5 closeout game over the Miami Heat, is well aware of this. As he raved about his 22-year-old teammate who was so deservedly awarded the NBA Finals MVP award, it certainly didn't sound like any sort of goodbye.

He talked about Leonard's resilience, how he recovered from two substandard games to play so well on both ends in the final three. He admitted the initial skepticism when Spurs general manager R.C. Buford proposed the 2011 trade with the Indiana Pacers that had brought Leonard to town. He spoke like a player who isn't quite ready to watch Leonard and the rest of these Spurs go on without him.

"I'm honored to be on this team right now because he's going to be great for years to come," Duncan said. "And I'm going to hold on as long as I can."